Key to server management: eliminate humans

David Berlind argues that the price premium vendors apply to blade servers may not be justified when they are compared to other server form factors, such as 1Us. His detailed analysis sheds light on the claims vendors make about hardware simplification, consolidation, and ease of management. Quantifying how well a blade offering can be managed is indeed tricky, and the FTE metric (full-time equivalents) he points out--which is a measure of how many server administrators can be replaced by one software box--does seem maligned.